FARMERS in the drought hit Matabeleland region are now swarming maputi making firms in Bulawayo to get chuff, a by-product of the snack which they use to feed their cattle as people apply desperate measures to save their livestock.
The situation has been compounded by the continued increase in stock feed which has seen most farmers failing to buy the product.
Poverty deaths have also continued to rise in the region, with estimates now pointing to more than 6 000 cattle having succumbed to the drought.
Sunday Business on Friday last week discovered that farmers were swarming maputi production factories where they are buying the chuff from the plants to feed cattle.
In Kelvin North in Bulawayo, farmers told this publication that the product was cheap and was nutritious feed.
A 20-litre bucket of the chuff costs $5 compared to between $260 and $280 for a 50 kilogramme of stock feed in most shops in Bulawayo.
“We are feeding cattle with this maputi, it has a lot of energy and the price is also cheap. We sometimes add salt and other ingredients but when push comes to shove you just feed the livestock as it is,” said Mr Boas Ncube, who said he has a farm in Marula, Matabeleland South.
“You only need to make sure that after feeding the cattle, there is enough water for them because the feed is full of roughage.”
Another farmer from Kezi said as farmers they have pooled resources and are hiring trucks to carry the feed.
“We are even trying to negotiate with the owners of these factories to reserve the chuff for us but if it was up to us, we even want to buy the maputi to feed our cattle. It is a sorry state back home, cattle are dying and farmers are stranded,” he said.
The situation was also the same at another processing plant at Shasha at the Renkini Long Distance Bus Terminus as farmers were buying the products.
A worker at one of the maputi processing plants at Man Precast Walling in Kelvin, Mr Trust Ngwenya said hundreds of farmers were flocking to the area to buy the chuff.
“We can sell as many as 300kgs of this chuff per day and the demand has been huge,” he said.
Farmers are also banking on the rains that have started falling in most parts of the country.
However, a livestock expert, Mr Mhlupeki Dube has warned that the transition from a drought to a wet season is usually the time when most people lose their animals.
“Remember when it rains firstly it becomes a little bit cold and that type of weather itself, causes animals to draw down on their energy just for thermo-regulation using energy reserves but because they are already very thin animals which do not have any energy reserves are drawing from empty reserves and they can succumb just on the basis of that cold spell that follows after some showers,” he said.
Mr Dube said the other issue is to do with the fact that the rain has some nostalgic effects on animals and they tend to think that there is green grass somewhere so as a result they wander off looking for green grass.
“Some get lost and even die in the bush because they are thin and they are busy looking for non-existent green grass on the basis of the rain that has fallen so once there is rain you need to look at your animals closely so that they do not stray. Above all you need to give them an energy supplementary diet, that means even if it is hay you need to mix it with molasses which is a carbohydrate which provides energy so that is an energy supplement if you do not have the commercial stock feeds.”
He added that farmers also need to give the animals a jab of vitamins.
“The most important part is that farmers have to be patient for about two to three weeks when the grass starts growing so that the animals can gain some condition because the tendency is that just after it has rained people rush to the field and use their animals for draught power regardless of the status of the animals or the condition of the animals. What happens is that soon after the ploughing day as you take them out of the jock the animals may just collapse and die because of the strain.”
-State Media